Discussions about creativity, growing old, growing young, self-publishing, freedom, the craft of writing, art, and many other topics. Part confessional, part thinking out loud, I write what interests me at the moment. BTW, I write my books under the pen name R. Patrick Hughes.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Elizabeth George: Setting in Action

In Write Away,
Elizabeth George discusses how she uses setting in her fiction.

SETTING

For George, the setting is like a living thing. It can tell
a lot about a character, and it can evoke an emotional reaction in the reader.
The purpose of setting includes creating atmosphere and mood. It can also
contrast with what’s going on in the scene, such as when something bad happens
in a peaceful setting. The writer should treat the landscape with the same
importance as she treats the character.

ON LOCATION

George likes to write about places she knows, often going to
where a story will take place. She notes everything from the flora and fauna to
the buildings to the type of sky. She takes photos as well. However, if she needs
to, she creates a setting, usually an amalgamation of different places she
already knows. She wants the setting to be as real as possible for the reader.
The greater reality it has for the writer, the greater reality it will have for
the reader.

CHARACTER’S
ENVIRONMENT

There’s also the setting that’s the environment the
character inhabits—his home, bedroom, automobile, and so forth. These things reveal
a lot about a character without the need for extensive explanation.

LANDSCAPE

OUTER LANDSCAPE

Each character has an outer landscape—his looks, skin, hair,
eyes, posture, voice, the clothes he wears, and so forth.

INNER LANDSCAPE

Each character has an inner landscape—his thoughts, beliefs,
objectives, interior monologue, and so on.

CONCRETE DETAILS

Effective settings require concrete details. Details are an
excellent way of showing what a
setting is like.

DESCRIPTION IN MOTION

Perhaps the most effective kind of description is that which
blends in with the narrative without interrupting the flow of the story.

Elizabeth George wants her fiction to be as real for the reader as possible. The setting in all its forms, described in telling details, helps achieve that goal. She wants to own her setting and, if she does own it, it helps the reader to own it, too.

How much importance does setting have in your fiction?

How do you approach describing setting in your writing?

How much effort do you put into using concrete details in your setting?

How much effort do you put into using details to reveal facts about a character?

18 comments:

This is a nice post, Richard. Elizabeth George does achieve what she advises in your examples above. (I was a George fan for awhile, but then her stories got too dark for me. But she's a brilliant writer.) I agree that settings well wrought plunge a reader into the story and its world and give the character multi-dimensions, so I do a lot of research for my settings, both historical and contemporary, and I do try to visit contemporary settings as well. (Thank goodness, though, for that little walk-about Google man that can explore streets in far away places. :-)

I always struggle with setting. This is an excellent summary of things I should be looking for! I do always go back in a rewrite and layer setting in, in such ways. I love the trick of showing a setting early and revisiting it again after the character has growth so we can see how changed he really is.

Hi Richard and Elizabeth, I like spending time on creating the setting, describing the fauna and flora in detail, maybe the background sounds, I also like to use the setting to highlight some important part of the story.

Setting is definitely important. That being said, I'm not a big fan of heavy descriptions in writing and because of that, I tend to struggle with settings. As a reader I'm more plot driven, and it effects my writing. I really need to work on my settings....It's a hard to find the perfect balance.

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About Me

I'm retired from the private business world and have embarked on a writing career. I've self-published two collections of short stories BATTLES AND OTHER STORIES and THE GUNMAN IN BLACK, 5 stories of crime, and a novel, ONLY THE LONELY on Amazon.com. I write under the penname R Patrick Hughes.